The Final Report of The Commission of Inquiry into
Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons in the Western,
Southern and Sabaragamuwa Provinces (Hereafter the Commission
Report) among its recommendations mentions the need for a
training programme in investigations for all police officers (pp.
80, 174). Besides this, the Commission Report recommends
that Police-Lay Visitors Panels be instituted for each police
area and Citizens Advisory Bureaus for each district level (pp.
80, 174). Obviously these are measures recommended to reverse the
consequences of the disturbance caused to the law enforcement
machinery by processes, which made large-scale disappearances
possible in Sri Lanka. (It must be noted that even politically
related disappearances are not past events, as several hundred
disappearances have been reported in the country quite recently.)

In fact, the law enforcement mechanism has collapsed
significantly. Extra-judicial killings are no longer phenomena
which merely relate to insurgency investigations but have
subtlety entered into the area of criminal investigations as a
whole. In many parts of the country there are complaints of
so-called self-defence killings, shooting of fleeing suspects and
the like. Complaints about the lack or inadequate investigation
of serious crimes have also become common. It is also no
exaggeration to state that bribery in criminal cases has reached
epidemic levels

The present situation is a by product of the history of
large-scale disappearances, which were achieved through loosening
all the hard knots that keep criminal investigations tied to the
rule of law and the elementary norms of human decency. The set of
Emergency Regulations used at the time removed the limitations
from the powers of law enforcement officers. As a result, Sri
Lanka to a large degree lost the human resources necessary for
law enforcement: i.e., a group of law-abiding law enforcement
officers committed to observing an extremely high degree of
caution, while also being highly skilful in the detection,
prevention, and investigation of crimes. In the past, although
the Sri Lankan achievements in developing such a professional
group of law enforcement officers had its limits, the
country's achievements in this area were considerable. It
was these hard-earned habits of professional behaviour that were
undermined in order to encourage law enforcement officers to
engage in illegal arrests and detention, torture and killings.

The control of the behaviour of law enforcement officers is
usually achieved through various forms of supervision in which
the departments deal with law enforcement and ultimate
supervision rests with the courts. The set of Emergency
Regulations used at the time were designed to remove such
controls. One such control removed was the judicial supervision
of post-mortem inquiries; this then allowed the disposal of
bodies without post-mortem inquiries. What logically followed
were executions without judicial inquiries. Law enforcement
officers thus got the 'freedom' to deal with
'crime' in any way they liked. The Emergency
Regulations removed the most fundamental checks necessary to
maintain a proper law enforcement mechanism.

Although the removal of controls was easy, effective
re-imposition of these controls is not an easy task. It is easy
to remove the Emergency Regulations. The chief executive or the
legislature does this by means of a simple declaration. However
to re-introduce controls to the same officers who have got used
to operating without them is no easy task. The behaviour of a
good watchdog that had been prevented from tasting blood can
never be the same after it has tasted it. In a country that does
not make a priority of incurring all the expenses necessary for
human resource training and of providing attractive conditions
for law enforcement officers, the re-creation of an orderly law
enforcement system will remain a formidable task. Nevertheless,
the delay in achieving this task poses a continuing threat to the
society.

A greater danger is that even the memory of a rational system
of law enforcement may be lost. Alleged criminals may be at the
mercy of the law enforcement officers. Contract killings may take
place with varying degrees of consent on the part of the law
enforcement officers. Corruption may become the deciding factor
in the treatment of persons who may have to seek recourse to law.
Politicians may exploit the situation and politicians themselves
may become compromised as a result.

Under these circumstances the Commission Report's
recommendations for training programmes in investigation for
police officers are quite welcome and even laudable. However,
such measures are wholly inadequate to deal with the situation
now prevalent in the law enforcement machinery, one in which the
internal structures of proper supervision have collapsed. Any
attempt at finding solutions must begin with realising the
enormity of the problem and with understanding that structural
issues gone wrong in the law enforcement machinery.

The Social Philosophy on the Basis of which Disappearances
were Encouraged: The Need to Maintain Order, With or
Without Law

The situation of instability and insecurity prevailing in the
country during the last three decades, and particularly during
the last decade, has given rise to a 'consensus' that
order has to be maintained with or without law. The underlying
assumption in this way of thinking is that law itself could be an
enemy of order. According to this way of thinking, certain
provisions of law restrict the powers of law enforcement officers
to deal with disorderly conduct by some persons or groups. This
thinking believes that the perceived restrictions need to be
removed and that, once freed from such restrictions, the law
enforcement officers may return order and stability to society.

This way of thinking is usually regarded as
'realistic.' The maintenance of order through legal
means is considered unrealistic for the following among other
reasons:

Financially speaking the country cannot afford to have a
well-functioning law enforcement machinery and must
therefore be resigned to have a defective one;

Too much insistence on law may discourage law enforcement
of officers from carrying out their functions even to the
extent that they are doing;

As corruption and abuse of power are facts of life in the
country it may not be a wise policy to fight too hard
against them;

As the insistence on law may lead to conflict, it may be
necessary to restrict such agencies that insist on
observing of the rule of law as the judiciary.

These and similar considerations form the basis for
encouraging such practices as killing under some circumstances.

The country now has the lessons gained by the experience of
testing the practices ruthlessly launched on the basis of such a
social philosophy. Instead of bringing about order these
practices have confounded the situation a thousand fold.
Ironically, the worsening of the situation may result in
reinforcing this same philosophy. It is like the situation of a
creditor who gives further credit to a debtor in the hope of
regaining his earlier loans

The Recovery of the System

After the Cultural Revolution the Chinese realised that their
society's existence had been threatened. The slogan "Rule of
Law as against the Rule of Man" was developed at the time.
Since then for over twenty years the Chinese have constantly
struggled to rebuild a society based on the rule of law. Despite
many setbacks and such cruel incidents such as the Tiananmen
Square killings, they have made enormous gains. Even with regard
to the Tiananmen Square killings, this killing of about 400
persons evoked tremendous adverse protests, which the
disappearances of tens of thousands of persons in Sri Lanka
failed to evoke. An impressive attempt to build a system based on
law is taking place in that country, despite the difficulties in
developing such a system in a vast country with over a billion
people.

Addressing the issues of developing the rule of law and of
repudiating past practices remains a fundamental challenge to all
persons who wish to help the system recover from the damage
suffered in its 'great fall.' A serious crisis in a
system of law enforcement can also bring about the dangerous
consequence of changing the mentality among persons who had been
beneficiaries of the system. They may shed their loyalty to the
system because it has become ineffective. They may adjust their
minds to the new situation.

It is only through the efforts of those engaged in various
activities relating to social change that could save the
situation. Political thinkers, social critics, jurists, judges,
journalists, those who deal with moral and ethical matters and
organisations including NG0s need to help create a social fabric
within which the society can develop..

The Interim Report2from the same
Commission on Disappearances contains the following
recommendation:

"Finally, we recommend the creation of a 'Wall
of Reconciliation wherein are inscribed the names of all who
have disappeared or died in this tragic period of our
country's history'.

"Your Commissioners consider this recommendation to
represent av ery important aspect of national reconciliation.
This Memorial Wall which will contain names denoting all
sections of the Sri Lankan people, will be a symbol of our
essential unity to future generations, a place to which
everyone in this country could come and pay respect to those
lost to us (p.---)".

This may be useful, as have been such similar monuments in
Cambodia as the Genocide Museum (located in a school transformed
into a Khmer Rouge interrogation centre) and the Killing Fields
(the location where these prisoners were later taken to be
executed and buried). Beyond providing an opportunity to pay
respect to the dead and preserve their memory, such a wall can
act as reminder of the enormous crisis we face as a society and
of the need to develop civilised ways to emerge from this
situation.

1Final Report of the Commission of
Inquiry into Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of
Persons in the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa
Provinces. (Department of Government Printing,
Sri Lanka, September 1997).

2Interim Report of the Commission of
Inquiry into Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of
Persons in the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa
Provinces. (Department of Government Printing, Sri
Lanka, September 1997).